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Text Chapter 587, Prosperity (6)

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    In general, if you take into account the possible rise in oil prices in the future, then the Germans will definitely make a lot of money from this transaction.  However, Scrooge didn't see it that way, because he knew that in a few years, a world war would break out.  By that time, German property in the United States will be frozen, and it goes without saying what will happen next.  Of course, the Germans did not take this risk into consideration.  It was just that at that time, except for a group of core members of Scrooge and the group of Marxists, few people really believed that an uncontrollable global war would occur.  Most of them feel that war can be controlled, and they do not feel that war is imminent or inevitable.  In addition, even if they are aware of the danger of war, the Germans will not feel that this is a loss-making deal.  If Germany had won the war, Germany's interests in Alaska would naturally be respected by governments around the world, including the U.S. government.  On the contrary, if Germany was defeated, what would the loss in Alaska be?  Moreover, this agreement will also bring the relationship between Germany and the United States closer.  In today's political environment, any tendency for the United States and Germany to get closer can increase the Germans' voice in front of the British.  Of course, what the two parties have reached now is just an intention, which also means that if necessary, both parties can use this letter of intent as toilet paper without any burden.  Therefore, this also provides an opportunity for some countries to undermine this intention.  For example, the United Kingdom was very dissatisfied with this cooperation intention, and the British government even made an appointment with the US ambassador for this purpose.  The American ambassador is inextricably linked to McDonald. In fact, there is no official who serves as ambassador in those important countries without the shadow of a large financial group behind him. Even in American tradition, what is an ambassador?  Yes, it was originally auctioned at a clear price.  When a person wants to participate in an election, he will raise funds from large financial groups to form his campaign team, and many people in their campaign team are directly from those large financial groups.  When he successfully becomes president, he will have the power to form a cabinet. At this time, representatives of the financial groups who have supported him will enter the cabinet and share power.  In order to avoid giving the impression of too obvious collusion between government and businessmen, generally speaking, people from large financial groups will not directly enter the government cabinet.  At this time, the diplomat's position becomes immediate reward for their support.  Of course, the more important the position of a diplomat, the more valuable the position of an ambassador from a country with more trade contacts.  Of course the U.S. ambassador has to be responsible for the United States. Of course he knows that the British are very strong. If the British want to cause trouble for the Americans, they can really do it. After all, being a troublemaker is the specialty of the British Empire.  However, he is not only the U.S. ambassador, but also a member of the MacDonald Consortium. Therefore, although he must be loyal to the interests of the United States, he must also be loyal to the interests of MacDonald.  So the U.S. ambassador said that these are free market behaviors. He does not think there is anything wrong with such behavior. Americans are free to do business with whomever they want. That is the freedom of the American people.  The brave people of the United States will never back down from defending their freedoms.  Of course, the United States also has positive goodwill towards the United Kingdom (although both the American and British people express disbelief in this, they still have to say it). If the British are also interested in the development of Alaska, he feels that the British  It's best to talk to Macdonald Ventures directly.  The British knew very well that the Americans wanted to pit them and the Germans against each other in order to obtain better conditions.  In other words, those damn Yankees are going to use the British as guns.  However, there is no harm in taking advantage of the situation at this time. If this transaction cannot be prevented, then it is always better to let the Germans suffer more losses in this transaction.  Not long after, a British development bank also stepped in, demanding the right to develop oil in Alaska.  So the German competitors appeared.  In fact, both the Germans and the Americans understand that the British are here to stir things up, but the Americans deliberately pretend not to know, and use the British conditions all day long to make the Germans make concessions.  In the end, when the agreement was officially reached, although the overall appearance remained unchanged, the Germans still made concessions on some issues, the most critical of which was the restriction on development speed.  For Germany, in a sense, as long as it has a large oil field in its hands, it does not even require large-scale development, so that the price of oil in the international market will not bully the Germans too much.  Therefore, in order to avoid the phenomenon of developers hoarding land similar to what happened in China in later generations, waiting for price increases without developing it, the formal contract also made corresponding provisions for the annual investment in Alaska by both parties.  Thus, soon after the contract was signed, development of Alaska began.  The development of Alaska starts with the expansion of the port.  Because with the existing port handling capacity, it is necessary to ensure Alaska¡¯s construction infrastructureIt's basically impossible.  Such a large expansion can certainly bring a lot of business.  To this end, German and Macdonald Ventures conducted separate tenders for their respective areas of responsibility.  These two tenders were targeted at global companies, but in fact everyone understood that other companies were just studying with the prince.  There is no doubt that the companies that won the bid in the end were German companies on the German side, and some companies close to McDonald's on the McDonald's Venture Capital side.  The first to benefit are the steel companies and the shipping sector.  At this time, Scrooge lost no time in launching the concept of container ships.  Compared with ordinary bulk carriers, the goods are first loaded into containers and then sent to the port for loading by rail or road. This loading and unloading method greatly improves the speed of loading. Before this, the scattered goods were transported to the port for shipment.  During transportation, it needs to be reloaded and unloaded many times. Each loading and unloading involves a series of things such as the arrangement and fixation of each item.  When a large number of containers are used, on a train or car, you only need to put the standard-sized large box directly on top, and then fix it at once.  When arriving at the dock, using a specialized container transport ship, there is no need to carefully study the location, space, center of gravity, etc. for various cargoes. The containers can be lifted one by one by cranes according to the set positions.  The corresponding location is enough.  In this way, time and manpower are greatly saved during the loading and unloading process. Originally, the loading time of a bulk carrier of about 10,000 tons often took as long as one or two months. This is also because the size of the cargo ship will not  One of the reasons why more than 10,000 tons is too much. If we build a 50,000-ton tanker like an oil tanker, it would probably take almost half a year to load the ship. Plus, plus the time on the road, we would have to grow several crops of day lilies.  .  Nowadays, a 10,000-ton container ship only takes a few days to complete loading or unloading, which greatly reduces the time it takes for such a ship to complete a transportation cycle. The shorter the voyage, the greater the reduction.  obvious.  For example, on the transoceanic route to the UK, the actual sailing time across the Atlantic is only half a month, but the loading or unloading time can be a month. Nowadays, container ships have compressed the loading and unloading time to one week.  Even if the maintenance time is taken into account, a container ship can make at least two round trips in the time it takes a bulk carrier to make one round trip.  In other words, one boat can be used as two boats.  As a result, when this new ship type appears, almost all bulk carriers will immediately become seriously obsolete.  Moreover, in the Alaska port expansion project, because the port berths are limited, in order to improve the efficiency of use as much as possible, the port regulations stipulate that after three months, any cargo ship shall not be docked for more than 8 days.  This makes non-container cargo ships almost lose the right to call at Alaska ports.  And everyone knows that in addition to the expansion of the port, there will be a series of large projects involved later, including the construction of railways, the development of oil wells, and the assumption of oil pipelines. These are all very large projects that will bring great consequences.  Much profit.  Moreover, this project cannot be completed in a short time. The entire construction time may take ten years.  This means that it is definitely not too late to start ordering container ships now.  It is even too late to start renovating or even building slipways now, and then building container ships.  And even if Alaska is not considered, just considering the high efficiency brought by the container ship itself, in order to make more money in the competition, it is also imperative for those shipping companies to replace the old bulk carriers with container ships.  It must be done.  So the wave of construction of container ships and slipways began.  Due to the limited area of ??Alaska's ports, a large area is reserved for super tankers, so the space left for cargo ships is limited. Therefore, only cargo ships of about 10,000 tons can be berthed here. Although with the emergence of container ships, cargo ships  It is no longer unimaginable that the tonnage reaches tens of thousands of tons.  But this restriction prevents shipowners who are eyeing business in Alaska from planning any super cargo ships.  At the same time, most ports in the world also lack oversized berths, and the existing berths only need slight modifications to accommodate container ships. Therefore, under such conditions, container ships with a tonnage of about 10,000 tons have become the best option.  choice, so most of the newly built slipways are also targeted at this type of ship.  "Dad, look, this is the situation of the newly built slipways in the United States. There are already nine 10,000-ton slipways being built. In the future, more slipways will be built. In addition, this is  The number of orders received by McDonald Steel in the past month has increased by 30%, which has exceeded our maximum production. Therefore, all orders need to be postponed. Do you think we need to ask Mike?  "What about Downer Steel's expansion of production?" Graystone proudly said to Scrooge while holding a pile of reports.
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